Most overrated baseball stats????

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by the 'stache

Agree with the bolded part completely. I see that Roberto Clemente's defense in right was worth only 12.1 wins over 17 seasons, and I laugh myself silly. Then I look at somebody like Andruw Jones, who was a fine center fielder, no doubt. But you'll never convince me that, for his career, his defensive contribution was twice as good as Clemente's. Jones had 24.1 dWAR to Clemente's 12.1. The argument has always been "Clemente made 140 errors in 17 seasons". How many of those errors came on balls that no other right fielder in baseball could have even gotten to? If you get a glove on the ball, but don't catch it, the official scorer is going to give the fielder an error. The point being that any other fielder in right is going to let the ball drop in for a double. Clemente's range in right was unrivaled, and his gun might be the best the game has ever seen. Of course, he's going to have more errors, because he's going to also attempt to throw out more runners than the average outfielder. When you're throwing the ball from the warning track in right field all the way to third base, some balls are going to skip away because the third baseman can't handle it, or it hits the runner.

Please. I've watched a ton of footage from Clemente's defense over the years. The man was a god in the outfield, and some stupid metric trying to convince us that his defense didn't even net 1 win in 162 games a season is utter bullcrap.

playing Cf gives you more value because it's a more difficult position. Andruw is not only the best fielding CF'er of all time, but it's not even close and Clemente had a great arm, but his range wasn't as good as old timey memory may make us believe. Confirmation bias skews things (which is why we have stats) (and man alive quit using baseball reference, it's old, antiquated and behind the times)

Clemente was a great OF'er, but by playing RF he is always going to be worth less than an equally great fielder who plays CF because of the range required.

oh, and Fangraphs has him worth 1+ win a year for his fielding :-)


edited to add: errors are not included in metrics, they are based on plays made relative to avg, in zone and out of zone as well as arm, distance covered...etc and yelling at math because it disagrees with your opinion is not really very scientific, it's the reason we needed metrics, confirmation bias skews things far too much for things like fielding% or errors made to have much value

[nat]

Don't listen to Nick about B-R, it's a very useful site. Philosophically divergent from Fangraphs on a few issues, but that's all. bWAR (the one on baseball-reference) and fWAR (the one on fangraphs) are useful for different things and in different ways (pretty much as with any two stats).

We know that fielding is the roughest part of the WAR formulae (and the hardest thing to measure in any case). Nick is right that it gets less accurate the further back in time that you go. The folks who put the various WARs together decided to use the best defensive measurements available for each season. Since our measurements improve over time, this means that the numbers that go into the WAR formula for a player in 2016 aren't quite the same as those that go in for someone who played in 1966. They could have used the same measurements all the way through, but at the cost of making evaluations of modern players less accurate.

This means that we know that there are some errors in our evaluations of older players, we just don't know who is being affected by the error, nor precisely how significant the error is. People in 1966 just weren't recording enough data for us to be able to tell these things. Clemente may have been better than dWAR gives him credit for, but there's no way to tell, and there's REALLY no way to tell how much better.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by nat

Don't listen to Nick about B-R, it's a very useful site. Philosophically divergent from Fangraphs on a few issues, but that's all. bWAR (the one on baseball-reference) and fWAR (the one on fangraphs) are useful for different things and in different ways (pretty much as with any two stats).

We know that fielding is the roughest part of the WAR formulae (and the hardest thing to measure in any case). Nick is right that it gets less accurate the further back in time that you go. The folks who put the various WARs together decided to use the best defensive measurements available for each season. Since our measurements improve over time, this means that the numbers that go into the WAR formula for a player in 2016 aren't quite the same as those that go in for someone who played in 1966. They could have used the same measurements all the way through, but at the cost of making evaluations of modern players less accurate.

This means that we know that there are some errors in our evaluations of older players, we just don't know who is being affected by the error, nor precisely how significant the error is. People in 1966 just weren't recording enough data for us to be able to tell these things. Clemente may have been better than dWAR gives him credit for, but there's no way to tell, and there's REALLY no way to tell how much better.

I'm just giving him guff about BR dating back to that Jim Kaat argument.

It is useful, I just don't think much of their version of WAR.

you bring up a good point about older (and even present day) defensive numbers, they could equally overestimate as underestimate defensive value, people tend to lean towards their perception of a player, but that's usually not a good idea.

[FourStrikes]

"tonight's attendance is..."

yeah, I KNOW it's PAID attendance, but when the announcers are trumpeting a "full-house" or "standing room only" crowd and it's obvious there's sh!tloads of empty seats, my reply is always "WTF???"

JMO, of course - whether or not the above is actually considered a 'stat' or not, I gotta laugh..

DS

[CMIZ5290]

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

playing Cf gives you more value because it's a more difficult position. Andruw is not only the best fielding CF'er of all time, but it's not even close and Clemente had a great arm, but his range wasn't as good as old timey memory may make us believe. Confirmation bias skews things (which is why we have stats) (and man alive quit using baseball reference, it's old, antiquated and behind the times)

Clemente was a great OF'er, but by playing RF he is always going to be worth less than an equally great fielder who plays CF because of the range required.

oh, and Fangraphs has him worth 1+ win a year for his fielding :-)


edited to add: errors are not included in metrics, they are based on plays made relative to avg, in zone and out of zone as well as arm, distance covered...etc and yelling at math because it disagrees with your opinion is not really very scientific, it's the reason we needed metrics, confirmation bias skews things far too much for things like fielding% or errors made to have much value

Are you actually comparing Andruw Jones to Roberto Clemente?? Holy s****. Also, you need to get off this WAR shit. Look at the players and not these bullshit statistics. You are also the one the said Ed Reulbach was not even close to a HOFer. His record was 182-106 with an ERA of 2.24....What the Hell is his WAR?

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by CMIZ5290

Are you actually comparing Andruw Jones to Roberto Clemente?? Holy s****. Also, you need to get off this WAR shit. Look at the players and not these bullshit statistics. You are also the one the said Ed Reulbach was not even close to a HOFer. His record was 182-106 with an ERA of 2.24....What the Hell is his WAR?

times change, more information becomes available, either you learn to evolve or you fade away.

I don't see how cursing at me is improving your argument.....

Andruw Jones is the greatest outfielder defensively of all time and it isn't even close, I can present all the information to back up my claim (and none of it revolves around what I claim to have seen but rather with the scientific way: using statistics and data)


A jones- total zone runs 243

Clemente- 205

A-Jones- baseball references d-war (which I don't like particularly) 24.1

Clemente- 12.1


fangraphs DEF ranking (a conglomerate of several stats)

A-Jones - 281.3

Clemente- 84.4


Clemente was a much better hitter (hence his 80+ fWAR vs AJ's 67.1) but Andruw was a better fielder not only because of his range, and skill but also because he played the much more difficult position of CF for most of his career.